A minimal, painless middleware chaining library for Go HTTP handlers.
Alice is a Go library that provides painless middleware chaining for HTTP handlers. It transforms nested middleware function calls into a clean, linear chain, making code more readable and maintainable. It solves the problem of messy, deeply nested middleware composition in Go web applications.
Go developers building HTTP servers and web applications who need to compose multiple middleware functions in a clean, maintainable way.
Developers choose Alice for its minimal design and simplicity—it introduces no magic, works with standard Go interfaces, and provides a cleaner syntax than manual nesting or other chaining solutions.
Painless middleware chaining for Go
Open-Awesome is built by the community, for the community. Submit a project, suggest an awesome list, or help improve the catalog on GitHub.
Transforms nested middleware calls into a clean, linear chain using alice.New().Then(), significantly improving code readability and maintainability, as demonstrated in the README example.
No magic or complex abstractions; it's essentially a for loop that wraps handlers, ensuring it doesn't introduce hidden behavior or bloat, which aligns with the library's stated minimalism.
Works seamlessly with any middleware following the func(http.Handler) http.Handler pattern, making it easy to integrate with existing Go HTTP libraries, as emphasized in the README usage section.
Makes no guarantees about middleware execution, respecting each middleware's autonomy, which keeps the library simple and predictable for developers who prefer control.
Does not enforce middleware flow or handle inter-middleware errors, as the README states it has no say in whether middleware executes inner handlers, which can lead to unpredictable behavior in complex stacks.
Lacks built-in support for conditional middleware, ordering validation, or advanced composition patterns, requiring developers to implement these manually if needed, beyond the basic chaining.
The chaining is done at initialization with alice.New(), making it less flexible for dynamic middleware stacks that need to adapt based on runtime conditions or configuration changes.